In Iran, the occupation is incomprehensible, given the country’s size and its ability to resist. All of this means that the Trump administration has chosen to achieve its most ambitious foreign policy goals with limited means.
By Richard HAAS
There is much to be said about the United States’ decision to attack Iran – and about what might result from joint US-Israeli strikes against military and political targets across the country. Unfortunately, little of it is comforting. First and foremost, this is a war of choice. The US had other policy options available to it. Diplomacy seemed promising as a means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Increased economic pressure had the potential over time to induce regime change.
Moreover, this is a preventive war, not a preemptive one. Iran posed no immediate threat to vital U.S. interests. Iran was not on the verge of becoming a nuclear weapons state or of using its weapons against the United States. At most, the threat from Iran was a growing threat. This distinction is important. A world in which countries believe they have the right to launch preemptive strikes against those they consider threats would be a world of frequent conflict. Such actions therefore have no basis in international law.
US President Donald Trump has chosen a target – regime change – that is political, not military. But while military force can destroy and kill, it cannot by itself bring about regime change, which requires the regime to collapse. It is possible that the US attack will provoke defections from Iran’s political leadership and armed forces, but it cannot be relied upon to do so. Hamas and Gaza are a reminder that regimes can withstand incredible punishment and still remain in power. And even if the clerics fall from power – there are reports that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been assassinated – the security forces are perhaps best positioned to take their place. In any case, using military force to kill specific leaders as a way to induce regime change – a tactic often called beheading – is unlikely to succeed in Iran, where the leadership has institutionalized itself since taking power nearly half a century ago. Moreover, the leadership has had time to improve succession planning over the past few weeks, as the possibility of war has increased.
During its January intervention in Venezuela, the Trump administration limited itself to replacing a leader (almost completely ignoring the domestic opposition), while in much of the world, it has avoided pushing for democracy. In the case of Iran, however, Trump has called for regime change – but without preparing the ground for it. The political opposition is not united and does not function as a government in waiting, which means it is unable to admit defects, let alone provide security. History suggests that regime change requires a physical presence on the ground. This is the lesson of Germany and Japan after World War II, and of Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan more recently. And even with a presence on the ground, such efforts often fail.
In Iran, occupation is incomprehensible, given the country’s size and its capacity for resistance. All of this means that the Trump administration has chosen to achieve its most ambitious foreign policy goals with limited means. It appears to have rejected a war of choice with narrower goals, such as weakening Iran’s known nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, even though it could credibly claim to have achieved those goals.
If there is a recent parallel to what is happening in Iran, it is Libya, where a little over a decade ago Western forces ousted the leadership using air power but then withdrew, leaving the country in chaos. In the Iranian case, it seems that the amassing of a large military presence – what Trump called an armada – ended up putting pressure on the administration to act, because American forces could not be kept on high alert in the country indefinitely. As a result, the tools of policy (military force) may have played a major role in determining the goals of the policy, namely the decision to attack. This is clearly the opposite of how policy should be set.
Taking a step back, the US has once again chosen to make a massive strategic commitment to the Middle East. This runs counter to the Trump administration’s own National Security Strategy and the reality that the greatest challenges to US interests lie in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The parallel here is with the 2003 Iraq War, another preemptive war of choice in the region that cost the US enormously. The American people are not prepared for this war. Nor is Trump’s political base, as it will shake up markets, cause energy prices to rise, and could drag on for a long time.
America’s allies are also unhappy, as Iran has already attacked several neighboring countries and could take steps to damage their economies. Trump did not use his State of the Union address Tuesday night to justify attacking Iran, and much of his statement immediately after Saturday’s attack emphasized Iran’s past actions rather than new or emerging threats. It is possible that the costless bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites last year and the more recent intervention in Venezuela made Trump and those around him too confident that they could achieve ambitious goals with limited means and at low cost. He may also have been tempted to achieve something historic in Iran—regime change—that has eluded his predecessors. He may yet succeed. But regime change is, as a rule, easier to seek than to successfully achieve. While it takes one side to start a war, it takes two to finish it. Iran now has a say in how big this conflict will become and how long it will last. (Politico.eu)